The struggle for emancipation in the Civil War produced some memorable cartoons. One such example appeared in Harper’s Weekly in its issue of August 16, 1862.

The caption for the cartoon reads, “DROWNING GENTLEMAN. ‘Take that Rope away, you darned Nigger! What decent White Man, do you suppose, is going to allow himself to be saved by a confounded Nig — ‘ (Goes down, consistent to the last.)”

Of course, the point of the cartoon was to criticize people in the North that opposed letting African Americans get more directly involved in the war, especially as soldiers. By late summer 1862, it was increasingly clear that the Union could not win the war if it did make war on slavery and enlist the slaves themselves in the fight. While this idea still faced considerable opposition, its opponents increasingly looked as ridiculous as the drowning man in this cartoon.

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About Donald R. Shaffer

Donald R. Shaffer is the author of _After the Glory: The Struggles of Black Civil War Veterans_ (Kansas, 2004), which won the Peter Seaborg Award for Civil War Scholarship in 2005. More recently he published (with Elizabeth Regosin), _Voices of Emancipation: Understanding Slavery, the Civil War, and Reconstruction through the U.S. Pension Bureau Files_ (2008). Dr. Shaffer teaches online exclusively (i.e., a virtual professor). He lives in Arizona and can be contacted at donald_shaffer@yahoo.com